BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.
BarcampUKGovweb
What?
This barcamp is about creating a shared vision for UK government web activity, and establishing the UK government digital network - bringing together the community of webbies within central government and the wider public sector.
Why?
Government's approach to all things web and digital is changing for all sorts of reasons: transformational government / website rationalisation provides greater focus on a smaller number of online channels, the impact of - and opportunities presented by - web 2.0 is looming large in everyone's thoughts, online engagement and deliberation are buzz phrases around Whitehall.
• What does this all mean?
• How does it all fit together?
• What skills / resources are organisations going to need in future?
• Who's done it already?
• How do you actually do this stuff?
This barcamp provides a opportunity where hopefully we can answer some of the difficult questions and create a shared vision and approach. Equally, its hoped we can mobilise the government digital media community to improve our skills, knowledge and voice as a collective group.
When?
We plan to run this event during the last weekend of January 2008: at least Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th if there's enough demand.
Who should attend?
This event should be of interest to all who work in the UK government digital media community: permanent civil servants, contractors, consultants, agencies, advisers, supporters, observers, and critics.
If you think you've got something to contribute to improving how government organisations use the web, then this event is to you. If demand and space results in us becoming oversubscribed, we may limit spaces to a representative sample of the above.
Sign up further down this page, and be prepared to lead a session on something.
Where?
Location not yet decided, but somewhere in central London so that if you need to stay the variety of options will overwhelm you.
We need to find somewhere with a large communal space, smaller breakout rooms (six?), catering and possibly sleeping too. Do you know somewhere (see sponsors below)?
Participants
Add your name to this list if you want to come and under 'Session' detail what you want to contribute to the barcamp
| name | organisation | session topic /description | other topics i'd like to hear about |
| Jeremy Gould | Ministry of Justice | Something about web strategy | how to build a special interest group in a social network |
| Steve Bridger | nfp 2.0 | Something about breaking down silos / new job roles / skillsets | how to encourage innovation without re-inventing the wheel each time |
| Stuart Reid | Black Mole | Good uses for video online | Project collaboration across different geographical sites |
| David Wilcox | Designing for Civil Society | Something on co-design | Integrating online engagement with other methods |
| Paul Clarke | Honestlyreal | Setting strategy: do simple things well, or innovate and accept failures? | Selling mashups to policy owners |
| Jag Singh | MessageSpace.co.uk | Social schmocial - it's simply a network | Legitimacy considerations re: online govt. engagement + Minorities on the web |
| Tom Steinberg | mySociety.org | Dunno yet | But I'm sure it'll be fab |
| James Darling | Independant/CitySafe | TBA | |
| Ben Whitnall | Delib | Something about social media (not just the Facebook variety), engagement and consultation? | Something on assessing results, success, measurements, metrics, ROI, value etc |
| Lee Bryant | Headshift | Starting from the inside | Participation and engagement ideas |
| Adam McGreggor | Too Many Hats þ | - | - |
| Graham Higgins | SemWebParlParse and Bel-EPA | semantic web technologies and democratic engagement | trust metrics and schemes |
| Julian Todd | Publicwhip, undemocracy.com | scraping, parsing, political accountability | tracking finances, contracts, profits in general |
| Mark Simpkins | ivotedforyoubecuase.com | social software, engagement and education | |
| Steve Dale | IDeA Communities IDeA CoP Platform | Creating and managing communities of practice in local government | any inside knowledge about Google's strategy for social networking |
| Guido Fawkes | Order-Order.com | Keeping it real(istic)- What the public sector should not be doing | What the private sector should be doing |
| Rob McKinnon | TheyWorkForYou.co.nz | Networked democracy - transparency, collaboration, emergence | Discussion on how we can help in Lawrence Lessig's 10 year campaign against corruption: http://lessig.org/blog/2007/10/corruption_lecture_alpha_versi_1.html |
| Dave Briggs | the information authority | online social tools, community building, using social media to improve engagement | Getting buy-in to web 2.0 initiatives |
| William Heath | Ideal Governmnt | What we want from e-enabled public services? | Any kinds of new energy and ideas generated by the contempory internet |
| Daintree Peters | Revevol | Make it realistic, pragmatic and deliverable. | Tying in with other comms strategies across govt (process and technical perspective). Also, inclusive of non-tech savvy (eg not us!). |
| Mercedes Clark-Smith | National Archives | Web strategy,UCD | social networks, practical ways of using semantic web or anything anyone is doing in the area,agile and UCD |
| James Corrigan | East Devon | What the web really means in the rural community and driving take up in the real world | It would be great if people nationally would come down to the REAL south west (which isn't just Bristol, folks!) If you're willing, we can try to make conference arrangements in Devon? |
| Carl Haggerty | Devon | Council web strategies and links with local and regional portals | If we can help provide a south west aspect to this that would be great, Would be happy to support James with arrangements in Devon? |
| Dominic Tinley | UK Parliament | Something about what Parliament is doing | What everyone else is doing, and other good ideas |
Francis Irving Public Whip, mySociety, UNDemocracy How to court programmers to work for you who actual care about what they do Data sets we haven't even heard of that should be open, changes in IT procurement policy to be more agile
Volunteers
add your name to this list if you're prepared to help make the event happen by becoming involved in its organisation
Jeremy Gould
Adam McGreggor (time permitting)
Graham Higgins
William Heath
Mercedes Clark-Smith
Daintree Peters
Sponsors
Some of the things we need, and hope various organisations can provide:
• a location - requirements detailed above
• food - breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks for the two days
• drink - cold, hot, soft, hard
• wifi - hopefully the location will be able to provide this too.
• goodies - as is customary at barcamps, at least T-shirts for all the attendees.
• entertainment - maybe some sort of social event on the Saturday evening
To do list
(please cross out when it's done)
Tech
Wifi
Projector, White Boards
Photo
Video
Audio
Non-tech
Breakfast
Lunch
Coffee/Tea
Tables and chairs
Name badges?
Schedule
...will be posted here as it develops.
Tags for flickr, delicious, ma.gnolia, technorati etc.
Please use the tag ( barcampukgovweb) for content related to this event
Who's blogging?
Add your name and URL to this list if you intend to blog at the event. This will help other participants to follow the build up and post-event coverage.
Jeremy Gould Whitehall webby
William Heath Ideal Government
Some Background Reading
• BarcampWellingtonNZeGov
• Transformational Government
• Ideal Gov comment on Transformational Government
• [http://www.directionlessgov.com/results/?as_q=web+2.0
|Directionless Government]
•
The power of information review
• The Government web strategy - back of a fag packet version
• BBC - Government websites 'too complex'
• Norway creates first Web 2.0 government
The rules of BarCamp (as listed by barcamp.org) are:
• 1st Rule: You do talk about Bar Camp.
• 2nd Rule: You do blog about Bar Camp.
• 3rd Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
• 4th Rule: Only three word intros.
• 5th Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
• 6th Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.
• 7th Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
• 8th Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don't really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.)
